It's Corp USA white collars killing the economy not Unions and the middle class

[merrill]

BTW it's not unions breaking the economy it is Big Dollar White Collar ENTITLEMENTS, Wall Street crooks, the nations largest banks, the war for oil control and the medical insurance industry!

Workers ARE NOT killing Economy!

People on the job = a strong economy.

Keeping people out of jobs will bring on a series of tax increases by way of user fees. YES user fees are aka taxes no matter what.

How does putting people out of jobs create economic growth?

AGAIN it's not unions breaking the economy it is Big Dollar White Collar ENTITLEMENTS, Wall Street crooks, the nations largest banks, the war for oil control and the medical insurance industry!

Big Dollar White Collar ENTITLEMENTS are killing the economy and our wallets

Still a Bad Idea | Dollars & Sense

"Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You with the Bill)"

UUA: A Voice of Economic Populism

 

[merrill]

"David Cay Johnston then boggled the crowd with a blunt assertion: "We pay billions of dollars in taxes that never get to the government."

" Much of the sales tax we pay at big box stores and shopping centers is diverted to the large companies that own the stores.

It's just one of the many swindles these chains have learned to perpetrate against city and county governments.

This is so effective that the Cabela family, which owns a chain of big-box sporting goods stores, receives 137% of its profits from taxpayer subsidies. If they couldn't work this scam, they wouldn't be in business at all. "

UUA: A Voice of Economic Populism

 

[boilermaker55]

BTW it's not unions breaking the economy it is Big Dollar White Collar ENTITLEMENTS, Wall Street crooks, the nations largest banks, the war for oil control and the medical insurance industry!

Workers ARE NOT killing Economy!

People on the job = a strong economy.

Keeping people out of jobs will bring on a series of tax increases by way of user fees. YES user fees are aka taxes no matter what.

How does putting people out of jobs create economic growth?

AGAIN it's not unions breaking the economy it is Big Dollar White Collar ENTITLEMENTS, Wall Street crooks, the nations largest banks, the war for oil control and the medical insurance industry!

Big Dollar White Collar ENTITLEMENTS are killing the economy and our wallets

Still a Bad Idea | Dollars & Sense

"Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You with the Bill)"

UUA: A Voice of Economic Populism

Less expense to the company via workers the more money in compensation to the management. It is the philosophy of I am cutting your throat to save mine. Which pits worker against worker.
And as one can tell, if you do not believe the rhetoric about Unions, stripping the rights and power of one group will increase the power of the other.
This is a horrible ideology for America.
UNIONS FOREVER!

 

[boilermaker55]

"David Cay Johnston then boggled the crowd with a blunt assertion: "We pay billions of dollars in taxes that never get to the government."

" Much of the sales tax we pay at big box stores and shopping centers is diverted to the large companies that own the stores.

It's just one of the many swindles these chains have learned to perpetrate against city and county governments.

This is so effective that the Cabela family, which owns a chain of big-box sporting goods stores, receives 137% of its profits from taxpayer subsidies. If they couldn't work this scam, they wouldn't be in business at all. "

UUA: A Voice of Economic Populism

I have been reading and watching things that David Cay Johnston has been researching about the romney taxes released. Some of the "legal" things that are available to investors that invest in the manner that romney does if quite interesting.
The tax dodges that they have available to them, which are legal, are highly suspect to being; dare I say it, patritotic to this country. They seem to confuse being patriotic to the country to being patriotic to their income.

 

[merrill]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, has written the book Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill). Juan?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, David Cay Johnston, the American home subprime crisis has been much in the news and the enormous impact it’s having on the economy. You’ve got a few chapters here where you talk about the home and home robbery, and you even delve on an issue that very few people have ever talked about: title insurance companies and the enormous wealth transfer that have gone on there. Could you talk about that?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Oh, sure. You know, when you buy a home — and I remember the first time I did it as a young man — you have this enormous sense of accomplishment, and you sit down in a room, and they throw all these papers at you —

“Sign this, sign this, initial this page, OK, sign this.” So when you’re all done, you get a little sheet listing all the costs you have, and you get dinged for $15 here and $25 there. But there’s one big item called land title insurance. If you buy a $200,000 house, it will probably cost you close to $1,000. Well, it turns out that ninety cents out of every dollar you are forced to pay for this goes to pay commercial bribes. And this goes on all throughout the industry all across the United States, and nobody is prosecuted for it.

And here’s what happens. Well, you wrote the check for the $1,000, the land title insurance companies, who are insuring the risk that someone will come along and say, “That’s really my piece of land,” or “I have the right to put an oil well in your backyard.

Here’s this document from 1848,” or your new outbuilding encroaches one inch onto the neighbor’s land, supposedly. That’s what you are insuring against. These companies’ real customers are the real-estate agent that you thought was representing you or the lawyer you paid to represent you or the mortgage broker who arranged to get you the mortgage, because they steer you to the title company. And in return, they get kickbacks.

The state insurance commissioners of California and Washington wrote very detailed reports about this, because one of the land title companies tried to spear the insurance commissioner of Colorado.

And there’s emails and tape-recorded conversations about a very Machiavellian plot to use the news media to a plant a question that would smear this woman. And what did the insurance commissioners say should be done after they found that 90 percent of this money is paid in kickbacks? And by the way, one of the big title companies, in its report to shareholders, says that its customers aren’t you and me, when we buy a house; it says its customers are the bankers and the brokers and the lawyers.

Well, the insurance commissioners said what we need is an education program. We need to make sure that the land title companies know that they can’t pay these kickbacks and referral fees, as they’re politely called. Well, if the education program worked, the cost of land title insurance would have dropped 90 percent. It hasn’t. So it’s another example of the kind of institutionalized corruption that I write about in Free Lunch that takes money from the many and concentrates it in the hands of the politically connected few.


"Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You with the Bill)"

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

Oh gee.. a "workers unite" thread!!!!

Union slugs...

 

[Oldstyle]

"David Cay Johnston then boggled the crowd with a blunt assertion: "We pay billions of dollars in taxes that never get to the government."

" Much of the sales tax we pay at big box stores and shopping centers is diverted to the large companies that own the stores.

It's just one of the many swindles these chains have learned to perpetrate against city and county governments.

This is so effective that the Cabela family, which owns a chain of big-box sporting goods stores, receives 137% of its profits from taxpayer subsidies. If they couldn't work this scam, they wouldn't be in business at all. "

UUA: A Voice of Economic Populism

Gee, I was a history major in college so math was never my thing but last time I checked you could only get 100% of something. How does Cabela's get 137% of it's profits from taxpayer subsidies? You guys make me chuckle with some of this nonsense.

 

[merrill]

"David Cay Johnston then boggled the crowd with a blunt assertion: "We pay billions of dollars in taxes that never get to the government."

" Much of the sales tax we pay at big box stores and shopping centers is diverted to the large companies that own the stores.

It's just one of the many swindles these chains have learned to perpetrate against city and county governments.

This is so effective that the Cabela family, which owns a chain of big-box sporting goods stores, receives 137% of its profits from taxpayer subsidies. If they couldn't work this scam, they wouldn't be in business at all. "

UUA: A Voice of Economic Populism

Gee, I was a history major in college so math was never my thing but last time I checked you could only get 100% of something. How does Cabela's get 137% of it's profits from taxpayer subsidies? You guys make me chuckle with some of this nonsense.

You don't have the 20 plus years of experience that Johnston has investigating tax dollar issues. Therefore you cannot effectively prove your point and makes you similar to a lot of elected officials who as Johnston puts have no clue about tax matters.

In fact according to Johnston most tax matters pass without debate I assume due to the ignorance of the government body.

 

[imbalance]

Lyndon B Johnson killed the US economy when he spent it into insolvency in the late 60s. But rather than officially declare US sovereign default LBJ continued to spend his way out of office. Nixon arrived and in the immediacy of desperate times calling for desperate measures, Nixon profoundly restructured the international economic system and transformed our currency from specie to fiat which turned the concept of money as an issuance of US sovereign debt upside down. Since 1971, the $USD is a credit instrument issued by the US that obligates holders of $USDs liable as debtors to the Federal Government. This means US citizens cannot be sovereign holders of our own currency.

 

[Oldstyle]

"David Cay Johnston then boggled the crowd with a blunt assertion: "We pay billions of dollars in taxes that never get to the government."

" Much of the sales tax we pay at big box stores and shopping centers is diverted to the large companies that own the stores.

It's just one of the many swindles these chains have learned to perpetrate against city and county governments.

This is so effective that the Cabela family, which owns a chain of big-box sporting goods stores, receives 137% of its profits from taxpayer subsidies. If they couldn't work this scam, they wouldn't be in business at all. "

UUA: A Voice of Economic Populism

Gee, I was a history major in college so math was never my thing but last time I checked you could only get 100% of something. How does Cabela's get 137% of it's profits from taxpayer subsidies? You guys make me chuckle with some of this nonsense.

You don't have the 20 plus years of experience that Johnston has investigating tax dollar issues. Therefore you cannot effectively prove your point and makes you similar to a lot of elected officials who as Johnston puts have no clue about tax matters.

In fact according to Johnston most tax matters pass without debate I assume due to the ignorance of the government body.

Well if Mr. Johnston's 20 plus years of experience has led him to believe you can get 137% of something then I stand corrected. He's obviously a "master" of statistics. (eye-roll)

 

[boilermaker55]

Oh gee.. a "workers unite" thread!!!!

Union slugs...

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
Theodore Roosevelt
No finer statement ever made by an man who really had an understanding about people with wealth and the means and ways to infiltrate into putting money into their own pockets.
Yes, Union Workers unite to combat those who are ruining this country.
UNIONS FOREVER!

 

[merrill]

Speaker: David Cay Johnston

David Cay Johnston believes if you're under 45, you're probably confused.

"I've done over 500 public talks," he said at his General Assembly appearance late Saturday afternoon. The audiences have varied from universities to small colleges, from civic groups to government leadership conferences. "And I always ask: What are the reasons we created this country?"

"The modal answer—the one given more often than any other is: So we can get rich."

We shouldn't be surprised that so many Americans have lost touch with the six basic purposes of government—society, justice, peace, security, commonwealth, and freedom—laid out in the preamble to the Constitution.

"If you were born after 1962, all you have ever heard in your adult life is that the purpose of government is to make people rich." This idea has been embedded in the rhetoric of every president since Ronald Reagan; younger Americans believe it because that's all they've ever heard.

As a nation, he says, we have failed them by not giving them a different, stronger message about the purpose of civic life.

Johnston, who recently retired from the New York Times after a long career covering the beat of taxes, tax evasion, and the IRS, provided a brisk tour through some of the themes in his new book, Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill).

The talk was sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Association Committee on Socially Responsible Investing. While understanding the mechanics of taxation can be hard even for experts, Johnston says that the basic concepts and principles are easy to understand—and that despite that, the media has done a very poor job of helping people understand them.

"Politics is the method by which we divide scarce resources," said Johnston.

He pointed out that all the capital investment Broward County made in the convention center, and all the investments the hotels made in land and buildings, are worthless until they hire employees to make it all run.

"But we treat the people who do the work that makes the investment valuable like they're a cost—a bad thing.

Since the late 1970s, we have been seeing rising returns to capital, and decreasing returns to labor"—in other words, the capital owners keeping more of the profit, rather than sharing it with the people who make their businesses go.


UUA: A Voice of Economic Populism

 

[bripat9643]

Less expense to the company via workers the more money in compensation to the management. It is the philosophy of I am cutting your throat to save mine. Which pits worker against worker.
And as one can tell, if you do not believe the rhetoric about Unions, stripping the rights and power of one group will increase the power of the other.
This is a horrible ideology for America.
UNIONS FOREVER!

Do union numskulls actually fall for this swill? If a company reduces the number of people needed to do that job, it doesn't help anyone, including management.

However, union featherbedding and arcane work rules hurt everyone, including union members.

 

[merrill]

Face it without workers the economy,the governments and business are nothing absolutely nothing.
Workers are an investment not a liability.

Unions brought:
* the best wages
* 40 hour work weeks instead of 80 hour work weeks
* vacation pay
* sick leave
* medical insurance
* employee rights
* Bargaining
* equal opportunity